Painting

Early African American Painters

The first African American painters to be recognized were slaves who painted portraits of their masters' families and perhaps other well-to-do members of the Southern aristocracy. Indeed, there are stories of slaves who were able to barter their freedom in exchange for their skills with the paintbrush. There were also free Northern blacks who specialized in painting the portraits of other free African Americans. Among the most well known of these artists are Scipio Moorhead (c. 1773) of Boston, Joshua Johnston (1765–1830) of Baltimore, and Patrick Henry Reason (1817–1850) of Philadelphia.

For much of the nineteenth century, and certainly before then, there were very few educational opportunities for would-be African American painters. Many of them were selftaught or were able to go to school only with white sponsorship. In the latter half of the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth century, the African American artists who are most recognized today painted in mostly classical and romantic styles. Among the best known are Edward Mitchell Bannister (1828–1901), Edmonia Lewis (1845?–1909), and Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859–1937). Tanner moved to Paris in 1891 and was discovered by the French long before finding acceptance among the art community of the United States.

A Turning Point

The turning point in African American art came about in the 1920s at the time of the Harlem Renaissance. This cultural awakening—which included music, literature, scholarship, and art—developed in New York's [Page 629]close-knit and vibrant black community of Harlem. During the Harlem Renaissance, African American painting began for the first time to show signs of social protest, reflecting the condition of blacks and reaching beyond the orthodox styles that had dominated American and European art in the nineteenth century. The most prominent painters to emerge directly from the Harlem Renaissance were William H. Johnson (1901–1970) and Lois Mailou Jones (1905–1988). The latter is still one of the most highly revered African American female artists, and for many years, she was a professor at Howard University.

Jacob Lawrence (1917–2000), one of the most well-recognized African American painters of the twentieth century, emerged shortly after the Harlem Renaissance. Born in 1917 in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Lawrence and his family moved to Harlem in 1930 at the beginning of the Great Depression and the end of the golden age of the Harlem Renaissance. In Harlem, Lawrence fell in with a group of young artists who became his peers and mentors.

Lawrence was particularly interested in documenting African American struggles, and some of his earliest work depicts historical events and periods, giving observers a fresh and unique perspective on actual events related to African American history. His first major work, “The Migration of the Negro,” done in the 1940s, was a series of fifty paintings depicting ordinary, rural southern blacks moving to the industrial North in search of work.

...